Support from Penn Faculty

Statement of Faculty Support for GET-UP efforts:

As faculty members of the University of Pennsylvania, we welcome efforts being made by GET-UP to unionize the graduate student workers (GSWs) in our university. We believe that graduate students have the right to unionize, a right confirmed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). GET-UP has been active in organizing a union for over a decade now, and while their earlier effort was stymied by the then NLRB, recent NLRB rulings have allowed them to revive their mobilizing drive.

At a moment when federal and state administrators have begun to roll back hard won civic and collective rights in a number of areas, it is incumbent on universities to model a different understanding of the relations between administrators and workers, one that is visibly participatory, collective and democratic. We urge the faculty-administrators at our university to recognize the rights of GSWs to form a union that will address, and negotiate for, better working conditions. Such democratic procedures, we believe, will greatly enhance the quality of both education and life within our larger university community. We believe that this attempt to form a union, and to thus allow GSWs an organized mode of participation in the working of the university, is part of the mission of the university to prepare well-informed citizens, confident of their rights and obligations.

Some of our colleagues may be concerned that a GSW union will have an adverse impact on faculty-graduate student relations. We believe that the opposite is true. The GSW union will negotiate with the central administration of the university, not with individual faculty supervisors or even departmental administrators. Further, a recent study, published in ILR Review (a respected, peer-reviewed journal in labor studies) underlines the improvement in faculty-student relations that result from GSW unionization (“Effects of Unionization on Graduate Student Employees: Faculty-Student Relations, Academic Freedom, and Pay”). The authors note:

In cases involving unionization of graduate student research and teaching assistants at private U.S. universities, the National Labor Relations Board has, at times, denied collective bargaining rights on the presumption that unionization would harm faculty-student relations and academic freedom. . . . Unionization does not have the presumed negative effect on student outcomes, and in some cases has a positive effect. Union-represented graduate student employees report higher levels of personal and professional support, unionized graduate student employees fare better on pay, and unionized and nonunionized students report similar perceptions of academic freedom. These findings suggest that potential harm to faculty-student relationships and academic freedom should not continue to serve as bases for the denial of collective bargaining rights to graduate student employees.

Even as we recognize that our university offers better working conditions than many, we believe that many of us experience forms of vulnerability, even precarity, that need to be articulated and addressed. Penn is often a leader in instituting institutional mechanisms that affect the conditions of learning and of work; in this regard, the proposed GSW union will allow Penn to join the community of over 60 public universities and three private universities where a union strengthens the GSW collectivity as well as democratizes institutional functioning. As the GET-UP announcement states, the GSW union will advocate for the most vulnerable sections of the graduate student community. We urge our colleagues and administrators to join us in welcoming and supporting the efforts being made by GET-UP.

(Names in alphabetical order.)

Adolph Reed, Jr., Professor, Department of Political Science

Alison M. Buttenheim, Assistant Professor of Family and Community Health, School of Nursing

Andrea Doyle, Assistant Professor, School of Social Policy and Practice

Are you a member of faculty at Penn who would like to add your signature to the statement in support of GET-UP? Please email penngetup@gmail.com from your @Penn address and include (i) the name of your endowed chair (if any) and (ii) your departmental affiliation.